What type of music improves learning

Many people tend to think of jazz as being big, loud, and filled with musicians who are constantly trying to outperform one another.

Even jazz greats like Miles Davis and John Coltrane recorded some lower tempo songs that make for great study music. Do some experimenting and see if jazz works for you!

Effective studying requires a relaxing, stress-free environment. What better way to create this than by listening to calming nature sounds while you hit the books? From gentle rainfall to the soothing noises of the jungle, the natural world has no shortage of soundscapes to get lost in. Many students will likely better respond to nature sounds than actual music because they are less distracting. A quick YouTube search will bring up many that are eight hours or longer.

All you have to do is hit play and start studying! Source: Digital Trends. The truth is that everyone responds differently to music. A genre one person finds motivating may be distracting to another. This is why our top recommendation is to do what works for you.

They conducted a face recall test on people who were listening either to rainfall, joyful music, or emotionally touching music. The group listening to the emotionally touching music did the best recalling faces. In this study, the participants' heart rate and blood pressure were monitored.

The group listening to emotionally touching music had increased heart rates over the other groups. The authors hypothesized :. A study out of Finland also looked at the emotional properties of music and its impact on memory formation, but with a twist.

It compared how music impacted the memories of those with musical backgrounds versus those without. Those with a musical background did better on the memory tasks if neutral music was playing, rather than pleasurable music. The opposite was true for those without musical backgrounds. The conclusion drawn here is that pleasurable music was too distracting to people with musical backgrounds.

In essence, their brains were too busy analyzing the music they enjoyed to form new memories. While those without a musical background were reacting to the positive emotions inspired by the pleasurable music, which helped them improve their short-term memory. The bottom line for now is that it's hard to conclude definitively that classical music is always the best musical option to improve memory. It may be a more complicated mix of music that calms the brain to let more sensory experience in but also increases our emotional connection to the experience, so there's more sensory information generated for our brains to take in.

These studies all focused on the building of memories. Other studies have found that classical music enhances memory retrieval, including Alzheimer's and dementia patients. The thought is that the classical music helps fire off synapses, creating or re-energizing, brain pathways previously left dormant. It is for these reasons that many people opt to listen to classical music when studying and again, there have been a number of studies which have proven the benefits of this. One such study at a French university showed that when students attended a lecture with classical music playing in the background they remembered more information than students who listened to the lecture without anything at all.

Another, carried out in , concluded that playing classical in the background helped improve memory performance in older adults more than other genres, and increased processing speed when listening to work by Mozart in particular. More recently, a study at a university in Texas concluded that students who listened to classical music whilst studying, during lectures, and whilst sleeping, performed better in exams.

This stimulates the brain to consolidate memories and is the same type of process that causes memories and emotions to be triggered by scent. The advantages of listening to music whilst studying are clear and it seems that classical can be particularly beneficial. See more by Candice West. Be you an old or new student, be assured that The Oxford Open Learning Trust will continue to work with you to help you achieve your goals. My Courses. No courses. Apply Now.